ChicagoQuest charter school turns learning into a game

Near North Side students have fun solving problems together

December 21, 2011|By Tom Mullaney, Special to the Tribune

Middle school students don't usually enthusiastically praise their classes.

But seventh-grader Tamiel McKee-Bey said she loves what she's doing at ChicagoQuest charter school, which, since it opened in September at 1443 N. Ogden Ave., has redefined education for its 234 sixth- and seventh-graders.

This reinvention of the typical urban middle school plays down rote memorization in favor of collaborative learning, critical thinking and imaginative exploration in an effort to change how students learn. ChicagoQuest teachers use digital technology and gaming to teach students how to think about systems and solve problems.

This month, Tamiel and nine classmates spent three days building a Rube Goldberg-like machine to open a cabinet door. Judges were coming to see if their machine, using materials such as a wire hanger, incline plane and wastebasket, worked.

A student released a hammer, which hit a ball that rolled down an incline. The ball hit an empty coffee can that struck three blocks of wood. The blocks knocked over a waste basket attached to a pulley, which was connected to a string tied to a wire hanger on the door handle. The wire hanger opened the door.

The class erupted in cheers. Their teacher, Susan Shor, applauded.

Tamiel jumped around the room, unable to contain her joy.

"I feel so excited," she said. "I really like this school, because, last year we weren't interacting, and here I'm interacting and learning and not slouching in my seat."

ChicagoQuest, one of 16 charters run by Chicago International Charter Schools, draws its entering class from 55 neighborhoods and 100 elementary schools, officials said. The 234 students are divided evenly between boys and girls, with an African-American majority, they said.

Director Michael Donhost said his main goal this academic year is to shape a cohesive culture for the school's diverse population. Quest will add a new grade annually through 2016, at which point the school will teach the sixth through 12th grades.

The standard model of learning in school is flawed and outdated, Donhost said.

"Information is compounding at 60 percent a year. Over 30 years, students will have a million times more information to manage. We want to create producers of information and not just consumers," he said.

ChicagoQuest is the educational sibling of Quest to Learn, a similar digitally oriented school that opened in New York City in 2009. Both grew out of research funded by the MacArthur Foundation, which has dedicated $7 million of an $85 million investment in digital learning to get both schools up and running.

The two schools' teaching model comes from game designer Katie Salen and her colleagues at the New York-based Institute for Play. Besides her role at Quest to Learn, Salen is executive director at the institute, an organization that uses game design to develop materials used at both schools.

Salen recently joined DePaul University's College of Computing and Digital Media and helped oversee ChicagoQuest's launch. While committed to the new learning vision, Salen dismisses technology as the "magic bullet." "It's not the technology. It's the pedagogy" that counts.

There are many signs throughout the three-story building that ChicagoQuest is not a traditional school. Sheets of paper taped to windows with messages such as "Collaboration Matters," "All Ideas Are Improvable" and "Win and Lose With Grace" reinforce the school's 10 core values.

There are no textbooks or desks arranged neatly in rows in the classrooms. Rather than lecture, teachers pose questions and guide students in exploration.

Students cluster in groups around tables, working out answers in collaboration. Homework assignments are completed on their school-issued iPads and emailed to the teacher for grading.

Each student sets his or her learning goals for the year and is monitored on performance. Instead of receiving letter grades, students are tracked on a four-step scale running from "novice" to "master" of skills such as "Design Thinking" and "Regulating Emotions," as well as knowledge of a subject.

Subjects are taught in multidisciplinary "domains." Science and math are taught in "The Way Things Work"; English and math in "Codeworlds"; and English and social studies in "Being Space and Place." Students learn how to design games in "Sports for the Mind."

Each domain class plays a 10-week game. Teacher Jerry Heycraft's sixth-grade Codeworlds class played Digiton. Digiton is a town in which students are trapped and must escape. The town suffered a calamity and lost its rationality.

The mission is to help the town mayor restore rationality. Over the trimester, students visit Algo Rithm's farm and learn to reprogram his machines using fractions and rational numbers. By the end, they have met the state's standards for math competence.

After each trimester, students face two weeks of a "Boss Level Challenge," in which their skills and ideas are tested. Last month's machine-building challenge was the school's first. Teachers appeared as nervous as students awaiting the outcome.

Many students said the school is fun.

"In my last school, we didn't get along," sixth-grader Z'Cani Ellis said. "There was lots of disruption. I'm learning so much here. I'm learning a lot with fractions. I'm having a fun time."

Teachers enjoy working at the school, too.

Nancy Nassr transferred to ChicagoQuest from a charter school run by the University of Chicago.

"I chose to come here because I feel it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for how to teach our kids," Nassr said. "It's a much more impressive way to educate. Here, students are the owners of their learning."